Storm is making me nervous...

Still down and out in Florissant. You can see places coming back on, but not my street. I feel sorry for the Ameren workers. This has got to be harder work then the summer storm. They cant even get their trucks in where they need to work.

I think I am definitely pushing the upper limits of my generator.

Runnning the pump, 2-400W MH, and heaters on the 215. Heater, filter, light, and maxi on the QT Tank, entire Nano, and the fresh water tank.

For the house I am running my furnance, frig and TV (my parents are here and needed something to do)

I am also running a power cord to my neighbor. She is 75 and refuses to leave her house. So we put her in a room with a space heater. Her daughter is staying with her.

The generator has a load meter and is running 97-99%.
 
If you find that you need to conserve, your tank will be fine for a day without the MH lights. Even in nature, there are cloudy days!
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8663768#post8663768 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Hobbes8017
Still down and out in Florissant. You can see places coming back on, but not my street. I feel sorry for the Ameren workers. This has got to be harder work then the summer storm. They cant even get their trucks in where they need to work.

I think I am definitely pushing the upper limits of my generator.

Runnning the pump, 2-400W MH, and heaters on the 215. Heater, filter, light, and maxi on the QT Tank, entire Nano, and the fresh water tank.

For the house I am running my furnance, frig and TV (my parents are here and needed something to do)

I am also running a power cord to my neighbor. She is 75 and refuses to leave her house. So we put her in a room with a space heater. Her daughter is staying with her.

The generator has a load meter and is running 97-99%.
Click to expand...

How big is your generator?

-Mike
 
The generator is a Coleman with a Honda engine. 5500 Watts with a 6500 Watt Peak.

I ran all that stuff for 2 1/2 days and never had a single hiccup or popped breaker.

Power came back on about an hour or so ago. I gave it time to make sure it was stable and then started pluggiong tanks back into the wall outlets. Just rewired the furnance back to the main power of the house and shutdown the generator.

Man, this is what Quiet sounds like!
 
The furnance is a gas furnance, so the only electric you need is for the blower motor and the transformer for the thermostat.

It is a simple 110 v blower motor. We just disconnect the romex from the fuse box and wired an extention cord to the the furnance. Then we just plugged it into an outlet on the generator. Ran it that was for 2 days. My parents and a friend stayed over last night to keep warm.

The furnance barely changed the Load Meter on the generator.

Now, when the 2-400W MH came on, the generator like to cuss me out for a few minutes!!!!


But, the 400W MHs actually helped keep the tank temp up, so it was a trade off. 2-400W MH kept the 2-300W heaters from coming one as much.
 
I was wondering about running my gas furnace off of my generator. It's, of course, hard-wired into the circuit breaker with a switch on the side of the motor housing to turn it on or off there if you want. How would I wire it so that I could run it off of my generator....and so it wouldn't back-bleed electricity back into the lines so I don't shock any electrical worker guys? I found some switch thing you could have installed, but it wasn't cheap. Kinda frustrating to have a generator and not be able to run my furnace off of it during the winter if I needed to.
 
For me, I took the switch out. Put wire nuts on the romex coming from the main fuse box. Cut the female end off an extention cord and wired it to the wires coming out of the furnance.

Took about 10 minutes of work.

Now that power is restored, I disconnected the extension cord from the furnance and put the original switch back in.

That took about 10 minutes.

We even did my neighbors the same way after he found out that I had heat.


I am going to be replacing the entire breaker box in January and will be putting in some cut-over stuff so I dont have to have extension cords all over. The stuff is alittle pricey, but worth it.

We will have more power outages, just a matter of when.
 
You could permenantly wire an outlet there and double male end an extension cord to run to the generator. Then make sure you throw the breaker to the off when you plug it in. Athough the ground would still be connected (does that matter? I'd ask an electrician on that one). It might be better to have a switch that breaks both connections. Either way you did it, it would be a 15-20 min job and a quick hookup next time.
 
This was just a temp job in an emergency. I for one would either completely disconnect the wires back to the box to keep from backfeeding power, or do the job correctly and get a cut-over sub-panel.
 
Hang in there folks, the people down south feel for you. Just a bit different. Our problem was no power and heat (95 during the day and 80 at night) for a week or more. It looks like you have the right idea.

Generators and the basics--but I don't think I could handle your cold!

Good luck!
 
Well, our July storm cut power to 600,000 homes and we had to deal with the HEAT...

We got both extremes in one year!!!!

CRAZY !!!!!!!!!!!
 
Well, I'm still without power. It's been out since Thursday midnight.

Mucho thanks to Mayoboy as he let me borrow his generator on Friday. He was even kind enough to bring it to my house and set it up (I was at work).

My big tank got down to 71 degrees (from 82). I lost almost all my fish (Regal Angel, Emperor Angel, Chrysopterus clowns (pair), Tomeni Tang). My Sixline Wrasse and Steenei Dottyback are still hanging in but the Dottyback is looking rough. The Sixline hasn't been affected at all. All corals and inverts seem fine, including my gigantea and crispa anemones.

My nanocube faired better. . .didn't lose anything and both the fish (True Perc pair and small Sailfing Tang) and giganteas look great.

:(
 
Steve gets an "attaboy" for that one. :thumbsup:


I hear he's pretty handy if you keep him away from nailguns. :D
 
Geez, shoot yourself just 1 time and you never live it down...

How many people are affected on your outage Bob? My mom moved in with us as she's 1 of 11 out (in Rock Hill) so I think it's going to be a loooong time until she gets power back. On the plus side, we now have a built in baby sitter and went out twice over the weekend sans children.
 
The problem in my area is that the outages are in small pockets. On my street (which is a cul-de-sac), the circle has power but the 7 houses on the "straight" section are out. My house is fed from the transformer on my next door neighbor's pole, but my neighbor across the street is fed from the street behind him which is also out.

For me the fix is simple. . .Ameren just needs to trim the branches at the house on the corner and reset the cutout at the transformer. Unfortunately, this will only affect 6 houses so they're not going to get to it very quickly.

Gotta review my homeowner's policy. . .

:D
 
Bob,

Sorry to hear about your losses. If you're interested, you can have my Sailfin tang which I've had for about 2 years. It's very nice but I'd like to get a different tang to add more color to my tank.

Let me know if you are interested once you get everything back up and running.

Nick
 
Too bad they don't have their act together a little better. When I left your house on Friday, there were 3 tree trimming trucks and 1 Ameren car a block away.
 
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